Poor-people food is very in right now, Madam says, without a trace of self-consciousness.
Just like jowar and bajra, she says. We rarely ate them before.
But now… she doesn’t finish her sentence. She is distracted by her face in the mirror.
She removes a silver tube from the purse and reapplies her lipstick, pouting and pirouetting her lips to accommodate the garish hue.
He’s been through the diet rigamarole with her, making her low-fat, no-fat, healthy-fat, fat-only foods, accommodating her ever-changing whims and dietary diktats. He’s seen her through the fruit diet, the juice cleanses, the cabbage soup phase, the high-low-complex-no-only carb business. Jeez, rich people can’t make up their minds, he thinks, but litti chokha, this is the food of his people!
His people.
He is wistful.
He hasn’t seen his people. Not in donkey’s years.
Not since Lord Vishnu was a baby boy, he thinks.
Eons.
He tries to picture his children’s faces, but like the banks of the river Ganga, they form and re-form before turning into mud. Then, without warning, the anonymous mud puddles sport contortionist lips in a vulgar shade of pink. He shudders.
He cannot remember his children’s faces.
He has tried to return to the village, but money is tight, and every time he asks Madam, the answer is no. The reasons are varied, but the answer is always no. Children have exams. Husband has a headache. Lazy Bones wants a vacation! Who’s going to do the cooking-cleaning-caring in your absence? Not a good time. Maybe next year. Make me tea. Bring me water. I don’t have time right now. Children need you. Husband will be angry. Didn’t you just go to your village? Not now. Maybe later. Children are hungry. Husband is hungry. Jobs like this don’t grow on trees. Cook this. Clean that. No. No. No.
I want pizza, says the little boy.
I want pasta, says the older boy.
The children interrupt his rumination. They transport him back to the kitchen.
Mummy, I don’t want poor-people-food, the children say in unison.
You have to try litti chokha, Madam says. It’s all the rage in my kitty club.
The children say, No, Mummy! Please don’t make us eat this new thing. We want our old favorites.
Madam says, No, children. You’re always eating pasta and pizza. So much maida! No, no, she says impatiently. The back-and-forth proceeds with practiced predictability.
He uses these children’s present forms to imagine his absent children.
The ages are similar after all, but he draws a blank.
The misremembered faces keep turning to mud as they did before. Etch-a-Sketch memories. It doesn’t help that these brats resemble his children about as closely as a prize racehorse does the village mule. These iPhone-obsessed, tennis-swimming-music-lesson-taking, English-only-speaking children might as well be from a different galaxy than his faceless progeny.
Fine, pizza for him, pasta for him, and litti chokha for Husband and me, Madam instructs, before flitting away in a cloud of jasmine-scented perfume. The children stay behind in the kitchen. He plies them with snacks.
The children have a nanny, but they like him more.
They like him more than their mother, he knows.
Most likely, more than their always-traveling father, he suspects.
He wakes them in the morning, bathes them, and readies them for school while Madam sleeps and the nanny watches. He makes them breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. He plays cricket and football with them. He turns into Horsey on demand. He is their servant, best friend, tear-wiper, snot-cleaner, cheerleader, confidant, mother, and father all rolled into one. They could be his children.
But they are not, he reminds himself. He seldom forgets his place in the world, but if and when it happens, life doesn’t take long to remind him of his bottom-dwelling bona fides.
The doorbell rings. The neighbor’s boy comes in. The children abandon their snacks to play with him. He clears their plates and begins preparations for the evening’s dinner.
He hums as he works. Softly. An old childhood song.
When the children’s dinner is ready, he starts on the litti chokha, and a curious sequence of events unfolds.
The sky turns a nostalgic shade of gray.
Like the monsoon skies over his beloved Manekpur.
Home.
He hears the unmistakable sounds of the fishermen’s songs as they sail on the Ganga. The river breeze tickles his skin. It carries familiar smells of holy sewage and household refuse.
Peepal leaves cackle over the village square.
Mynahs sing mirthful songs.
He starts kneading the dough, but Ma takes over the task.
Ma?
The pallu obscures her face, but he recognizes Ma’s wiry, wizened arms. Two green glass bangles clink as she rolls the dough into perfect discs. He watches, mesmerized.
A goat bleats.
A cow sighs moodily.
His sister’s laughter fills the evening air. She stuffs the discs of dough with the spiced sattu mix. Let me help, he says, but she refuses and tries to shoo him out of the kitchen instead.
One by one, the sattu-stuffed litti are laid in the charcoal embers.
The doughy spheres release a spicy perfume.
It smells like childhood and innocence. His mouth waters.
His wife makes long slits in the brinjals. She stuffs the incisions with garlic cloves and green chilis. He catches her stealing glances at him. She blushes.
Now she keeps her head down, shyly avoiding his longing gaze.
The flames paint her in saffron and gold.
Two mud-faced children wait patiently in the shadows, transfixed by the hungry fire and the promise of a feast.
The brinjals and tomatoes blister in the open fire.
The sky turns purple.
The women peel the charred skin from the vegetables, their fingers immune to the molten heat. They mash the pliant vegetable flesh with mustard oil and love.
Ma chops onions for the final touch.
The onions bring tears to his eyes. His face feels wet.
The women disappear behind the veil of tears, and he’s back in the marbled kitchen.
He looks around dazed. Confused.
The litti glisten with ghee.
His exhausted brain must have birthed the watery apparitions, he thinks.
But then why does he still hear the fishermen’s songs?
Why does the slap-slap of the river waves echo in his bones?
Smoke lingers in the air even though there’s no fire in sight. Then, the river breeze returns, stronger than before. It picks up speed and predicts a storm.
Trees dance outside the kitchen window.
A gale arrives, pushing him.
Pulling him.
Pushing again.
His Bata slippers thwack-thwack-smack against the marble floors as he walks away, wind-rushed. The wind uproots him. It takes him far away from the marbled kitchen. Away from the spoiled children. From Madam. Her needs. The Husband. The family. Their collective wants and demands.
He floats.
A leaf in the wind.
He soars like a bird. Free.
Higher.
Higher still.
A kite.
The glitter and gold of the city fade.
People become ants.
Madam is indistinguishable from millions of other ants. Rich ants, poor ants, nobody ants, famous ants, all the ants living minuscule lives in a city that never stops. He flies over the Deccan plateau into the arid heartland of this strange nation, and he prays to the monsoon winds, hoping this time they will carry him home.
~
Sahil Mehta was born and raised in India. He currently lives in Boston, MA, where he works in the hospitality industry. His work has appeared in Foglifter Journal (nominated for PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers), Tint Journal (Special mention, Pushcart Prize L anthology), Cleaver, Sixfold, South 85 Journal (2023 Julia Peterkin Flash Fiction Award, second runner-up), and other publications. His debut novel, Love, Loss, and Lost Causes, was published by Rebel Satori Press.